


all there is

by theacesofspades



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:57:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theacesofspades/pseuds/theacesofspades
Summary: Two days before St. Mark's Eve, Blue meets a strange boy with a weird name and a beautiful journal who talks about old kings like they're his childhood friends.





	all there is

Of her wide variety of jobs, waiting tables at Nino’s was Blue’s least favorite. It offered the least amount of freedom and the most time dealing with human beings. She didn’t get to spend time with cute dogs, or organize people’s yards, she just had to put up with the mind-numbingly painful job of smiling for eight hours while her soul slowly leaked out of her ears.

On especially grueling shifts at Nino’s, Blue liked to cope by pretending she was a famous ecologist, at work on a field study in rough and dangerous terrain.

She stood in the doorway to the kitchen, surveying the territory. It looked relatively safe. It was pretty empty for a late afternoon, miraculously only three parties in the whole room. There were two populations of _Familia suburbia_ seated near the front, already studied, tagged, fed. They weren’t her problem. In the back by himself sat her new study, the reason she hovered now between the safety of the kitchen and the threat of the tables. _Regulus aglionby_. Her least favorite. She grit her teeth.

She could tell Aglionby boys from the locals immediately by their plumage, royal blue uniforms marking them as somehow better, and by their different brand of loud boyishness, subtle but noticeable. They were an invasive species if ever she’d seen one and she had yet to meet someone who could say something genuinely nice about them without making a politely pained face. She would bet a lot that none of the local businesses would ever hire them, if Aglionby boys that needed jobs were even creatures that existed.

She hated them. So of course she had to get the table with one.

It was a rare and special thing to see a lone Aglionby boy out here in the wild. They thrived in small packs, usually with one unofficially designated as the leader, typically the richest, prettiest, manliest of them. But this one was solitary and wasn’t doing the constant, twitchy over-the-shoulder looks most Aglionby boys did when they found themselves unexpectedly isolated. This usually meant one of two things: He was one of those unofficial pack leaders and was not scared to be left alone like the weaker males were, or he was a loner.

Loners were safer than the boys that roamed in packs; they had no one to impress, so they were less unpredictable. This boy didn’t look like a loner, though. He looked like some governor’s son, the kind whose family’s idea of a small allowance could pay a year’s salary for everyone in her house; the kind she was to avoid at all costs.

Except when the cost was her job. She plastered a wide smile on her face and marched over to his table, intent to be done as soon as possible. She glanced at the clock on the wall on the way; thirty-eight minutes and she was out, she could do this.

She stalked carefully towards him. _Just take this slowly. You’re an expert, on the field. It’s dangerous territory, but you just need to get his order, quick and done_.

She made sure her best fake smile was in position; she hated smiling for these boys, but she had to do what she had to do. She took a deep, steadying breath. “Are you waiting for more people or are you ready to order, sir?”

He looked up, startled. He was fairly nice-looking, but that was to be expected of his kind. Except for the dorky wireframes he wore, he looked like every other raven boy she’d ever encountered. There was something slightly off about him, though, something Blue couldn’t quite name. Maybe it was just the glasses.

“Oh, uh, I had a friend.” He glanced across from him at the empty bench and frowned, daintily creasing his brow. “A friend was supposed to meet me, but he can be. . . . Well, I don’t think he’s showing.” He flashed a 100-watt grin at her like he hadn’t just easily announced he’d been bailed on.

“Ooookay. You good to order, then?” She brandished her pen like a weapon, eager to be done and on her way.

“Oh, yes, of course!” He glanced back down and Blue realized suddenly he wasn’t looking at the menu, which sat ignored and untouched at the end of the table. He was reading some fat book, a journal of some kind, breaking its bindings and spilling its guts. There was something beautiful about it. There sat a journal with a purpose, a journal that was used and loved.

It didn’t fit with what she knew of Aglionby boys, who preferred their shiny toys new and emotionless. Somehow it fit this boy, though. Something about them went together.

“What’s in the book?” A journal that swollen was full of stories. She hoped it wasn’t anything too personal; she didn’t want to intrude if it was just a diary of all his Aglionby exploits or how he cried himself to sleep every night because his parents had taken a grand or two off of his allowance.

He smiled widely and rested a hand on the book, proud and protective like a father with a particularly clever child. “Magic.”

She almost laughed in his face, right then and there. What an Aglionby boy considered to be magic and what she knew to be magic were two entirely different worlds. Different galaxies, even. Possibly this was his book of sordid ideas, and he was some disciple of Joseph Kavinsky’s, that hungry-looking raven boy infamous in Henrietta for the absurd spectacles of violence he called parties.

As it was, she had a job she wanted to keep and Aglionby boys didn’t tip well, but they tipped worse if you let on how much you despised them, so she smiled sweetly instead. “Is that so?”

A look like consideration passed over his face, and she had the peculiar sensation of being seen. Not merely looked at or looked over - she had had that experience with his kind too often before - but really seen. It unnerved her.

She coughed awkwardly and hurried to finish her job before he could explain. “So, order?”

“Oh, yes.” He looked almost disappointed; she refused to let it bother her. She took his order down quickly - a large deep-dish, half sausage, half avocado (the whole thing to himself) and a coke - clicked her pen shut and turned to make her escape.

The rest of the afternoon passed without incidence. The last half hour dragged on unendingly, but eventually it did end, blissfully, without one ounce of drama or disaster. She had even convinced Cialina to deliver the Aglionby boy’s food while she dealt with Suburban Family #1, though she now owed her.

As soon as the minute hand hit the hour, she was clocking out and calling a hasty “Good luck!” to Cialina’s craftily hidden middle finger.

Within seconds, she had her notepad handed in and her coat around her shoulders, pockets patted down to make sure she hadn’t dropped her keys or her hat.

“See ya’!” She waved back to Donny and rushed out the door and into the still-freezing early spring air. St. Mark’s Eve was in two days and she was dreading the promised chill already. It was bad enough when she came home stiff and frozen from being drained by ghosts all night, adding temperatures in the low 20s only made it worse, no matter how much she bundled up.

She wanted to just go home and collapse, but she still had so much homework to do. A thousand curses descended on her English teacher for assigning this stupid paper. She smiled to herself. She wished she really could curse her homework, or else spell it to do itself. Were that she was a witch with such powers. What was even the point of living in a witch coven if she couldn’t even use it for gain?

She zipped her coat up around her, pulled her knit hat down over her ears, unchained her bike, and rounded the corner.

“Ma’am?” Blue froze. She knew that voice. _Regulus aglionby_. God _dammit_. He was walking down Nino’s sidewalk towards her, magic notebook tucked safely under one arm. The low sun looked good on him, but she refused to notice.

She stalled out. She’d already lost her window to pretend she hadn’t heard him, and now she had no recourse but to acknowledge him.

Engage Work Smile™, full thrusters. “Yes?” God, she kind of really hated how she sounded on the clock, and she wasn’t even on the clock. Stupid raven boys.

“I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I got the feeling that I made you a little uncomfortable, talking about magic like that. And I might have stared a little. I didn’t want that to be your first impression of me.” He smiled sheepishly and ran his hands through his hair. He was either being genuine, or this little prince had a lot of practice at this. She scowled. Odds were the latter.

Speaking of odds, she considered hers, alone with an Aglionby boy in the parking lot of Nino’s with dark just around the corner. He was just one boy, she could probably take him. Maybe. She could try at least.

“It was . . . weird,” she nodded. She didn’t really know what else to say. She hadn’t counted on running into him; she had figured she’d never see him again, she’d never seen him before.

He shuffled his feet and stared at the ground. It was clear she’d made him uncomfortable now. Probably he was used to people instantly forgiving him and getting off with no consequences and no bruised conscience.

“Can I do something to make up for it?”

How Aglionby. Of course in his money-based mind he owed her now. She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to tell him he could apologize, leave, and never talk to her again, but to both their immense surprises her mouth betrayed her. “Can I see your journal?”

She silently cursed herself, but she didn’t take it back. She was very curious and she may never get another chance to see it. Might as well go through with it.

His eyebrows shot up so fast, for a second she was afraid he might lose them. His grip on the book tightened almost imperceptibly, but then he relaxed. His mouth quirked. He held the journal out, but though he was clearly offering it to her, he held it tight in his hands, unwilling to part with it.

Blue glanced around. No one else was in the parking lot, and she knew by experience that the two families inside would still be a while. She leaned her bike up against the wall, sat down on the curb, and looked up at the raven boy. “Show me.” She patted the ground next to her.

He stared at her; once more, she felt like she was being judged and it made her uncomfortable. Maybe she was being too forward. But eventually he lowered himself down next to her and rested the journal on his knees, his hands protectively settled on the cover. He leaned forward, conspiratorially. “What do you know about Welsh kings?”

Blue had to admit, she was surprised. Very surprised. “Nothing,” she admitted, but she didn’t want to disappoint him; he looked so eager. “Bunch of dead guys?”

“Not dead. Not all of them.” He shook his head vehemently and leaned in further. “Sleeping. Waiting. Have you ever heard of ley lines?”

The word tickled her mind, but she shook her head.

“They’re like -” he hesitated, thought, studied her, “paths made of energy, like roads under the earth.”

Corpse roads. Another mark of weirdness. What did a raven boy know about corpse roads?

“In the legends, these old kings get buried in high energy places - on the ley lines - and sleep there.”

There was something more to this, something he wasn’t adding. She poked at the book’s cracking cover. “So what’s it for?”

She had never seen someone’s face light up so quickly. Against her better judgement, she was beginning to like him. A lot.

“This,” His thumb slid across the cover and he looked down fondly at the book. “is for Glendower.”

It caught her off-guard, how quiet and utterly genuine he sounded.

Blue glanced surreptitiously at her wrist. She definitely had schoolwork she should be doing, but how often would she find an Aglionby boy interested in magic? Who spoke so reverently about weird things and knew about corpse roads?

She plunged forward before she could second-guess herself. “May I?” She held out her palm.

He bit his lip. His foot jogged anxiously. He placed the journal into her hands carefully, slow and steady like he was handing her his newborn child.

The cover was worn and the spine well-broken in, but the journal was also warm from the boy’s hands, and smelled faintly of mint. It was held together with leather wrappings, which she carefully unwound, letting the book fall open on her lap.

It opened to roughly the middle, revealing a page full of taped-in paper clippings, red pen marks running with abandon across the pages, listing names, asking questions, making notes.

Blue thumbed carefully through the pages, each as overwhelmingly full as the last. Some were even overflowing, pictures glued in at angles that left their corners beyond the bounds of the book, sticky notes hanging out over the edges. Subjects seemed to dance around, no real organization except what had been going through the feverish scribe’s head when he had been writing a note or taping in a picture or gluing in a newspaper article or even just doodling.

Blue had never seen a journal so well-used, so full to the brim with ideas and information and eager wishes. It made her want to fill up a journal of her own, though she had no idea what with. She was enraptured.

Words like ‘ley line’ and ‘Owain Glyndŵr’ and ‘sleeping kings’ stuck out to her. She felt like she had stumbled across the misplaced scribblings of one of her mothers or aunts. This was his?

“This is . . . beautiful.”

He smiled brightly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean. Really.”

It was surreal almost. She had never seen a teenage boy so openly eager about anything, especially about something so connected to her life.

“So tell me about it. What is all this?” She tried to sound casual, but her heart beat faster every time she turned a page and discovered more words, more pictures, more dreams.

“It’s my research.” He grinned like he was letting her in on the world’s coolest secret. Despite herself, Blue noticed it was a nice smile. She returned it. “I’m looking for a king.”

He reached for the journal and Blue begrudgingly handed it back. He flipped through the pages with purpose, knowing the book intimately enough to go right to his goal, despite the seeming randomness of the layout.

He quickly scanned the page he’d landed on, then handed the journal back to her, pointing at the torn paper in the top corner of the page. It looked like a piece of a page from an encyclopedia, just as old, dusty, and vaguely tea-colored as the book it was from.

She glanced over it. It was more about Glendower. She looked up and briefly caught his eye. He took it as go ahead and she perused the rest of the pages as he explained.

“Glendower was an old Welsh king. He was buried somewhere, and I’m looking for him. My most recent findings have lead me here,” He looked around the parking lot. “to Henrietta.” He said it like he’d said Glendower’s name, the first time, some sort of quiet piety in his voice.

“Why?” The clipping on the page made it seem like the king was dead and gone. “Was he buried with some cool treasure?”

He shook his head again. “He’s not dead. I’m going to find him and wake him up.”

Blue nodded. There wasn’t much arguing with that. She flipped back a page into a section that was uniquely devoid of penned in papers. The pages were covered in sketches of different places she recognized from throughout Henrietta. Tucked into the bottom corner was one that looked suspiciously like the church she went to for St. Mark’s Eve.

“What’s so important about all these places?” She carefully avoided the church doodle, looking back at the caves and trees and ponds scattered across the rest of the parchment.

“They're all places I believe to be on the ley line. They get incredibly high energy readings, I just have to follow them and see where they go. They should lead me to my king.”

His king.

She looked up and startled. He had moved very close to look at the drawings. His chin was almost on her shoulder. She blurted, “I can’t kiss you.”

His eyes were wide behind his glasses. “What?”

“Uh, I just.” What the _shit_ , Blue? “I’m sorry, I have to tell all the boys I meet. It’s a curse. Not telling them, I just-.” She clamped her mouth shut, desperate to stop talking. She would have to inform her mother tonight that she was packing her things and moving far, far away from Henrietta and going someplace this boy could never find her. _Fuuuuuck_ her. “I’m cursed, so for ease I tell boys. That. I meet. Sorry.”

He grinned, bemused. “Every boy? Well, there’s a conversation starter.” What. Like he could judge? “What curse?”

Oh God. She was talking to an Aglionby boy about her curse. An Aglionby boy with a book full of magic, but still. “I. . . .” She weighed her words carefully. “I’ve been told since I was little, by every psychic I’ve ever gone to, that when I kiss my true love, he’ll die.”

“You’ve been to a lot of psychics?”

Blue clucked her tongue, embarrassed. “You have no idea.”

He laughed good-naturedly. This was hell.

She glanced away, avoiding his eyes, and noticed for the first time just how dark it had gotten.

The sun disappeared fast this time of year, especially here, and Blue couldn’t tell how long they had sat outside Nino’s exchanging secrets. She was surprised to find she genuinely wanted to stay, despite what a fool she’d made of herself.

Still. Homework and worried mothers told her it was time to go. She stood up and brushed her legs off, then offered the Aglionby boy her hand before she could think better of it. He took it and stood next to her. He was much taller than her. She gave him his book back.

He stared at her. She realized suddenly that she had just revealed a lot about herself to a very rich boy whose name she didn't even know.

"Anyway." Blue coughed and started down the sidewalk with her bike. But the boy fell into step beside her.

"Do you know much about the psychics that live here? In Henrietta?"

Blue stopped. She stared at him. What would someone like him want to know about . . . ? He wasn’t making fun of her, was he? But then, he did have that journal.

"Yeah." She offered the least, holding his gaze. She wouldn't be the first to look away.

He looked bemused. "What do you know?"

"Huh? Oh, a lot. They're my moms."

He chuckled. "What, all of them?"

"Oh, no. I mean, just Maura, Persephone, and Calla. All the others are my aunts."

He whistled, a low, impressed note. He smiled, but he didn't look condescending. Almost wistful, maybe. Blue guessed he had a small family, probably an only child constantly doted on. Then he grinned teasingly and the look was gone. “And they all tell you not to go around kissing boys?”

She rolled her eyes. “Them, and other psychics that have no stake in whether or not I kiss anyone, thank you very much.”

He laughed. "Mothers and aunts may care enough to pay them off. You never know. All women, then?"

Blue grinned sharply. "Oh, yes. We eat the boys before they get too old, and the husbands after they've given us a few daughters."

"How commendable."

"I'm glad you think so. On a wholly unrelated note, follow me home? I can introduce you."

He laughed. It was . . . a very sweet laugh. Very uncommon for an Aglionby boy. What an odd bird.

"I'm sorry, but I don't follow girls home if the only thing I know about them is that they are the possessor of one deadly curse, and have a family that is equally dangerous to my person.” His eyes shone with glee. “What is your name?"

She stuck her hand out. He took it eagerly. "Blue."

"Blue?" Ha! That had shocked him at least.

"Blue."

He shook her hand, mulling it over. "Blue. It's certainly odd enough."

"Good enough for a psychics’ daughter?"

"Well, you did say one of your mother's names was Persephone, no? So not extremely weird. But I suppose Blue is just fine."

"I'm glad I have your approval, . . . ?"

He stared at her.

"Your name?"

"Oh! I didn't get - Yes, it's Ri- no, Dick. Shit. Gansey. I'm Gansey."

An odd bird indeed. Blue smiled. He was kind of cute when he was flustered, even she could admit it. "Well, Dick Shit Gansey - is that a family name, it's very lovely - it's been an absolute blast, but I really must be getting home now."

Gansey grinned amicably. "Do you live far? I could drive you home, if you'd like."

Blue blanched a little - he was nice, but he was still a strange boy - and he must have noticed. He backtracked immediately. "I mean, yes, okay, that was weird. That was weird? That was weird. I just." He shuffled his feet. "If you were going to walk home, I mean it's getting dark and -"

"I have a bike.” She nodded to it. “I'll be okay."

"Okay." Gansey stared down at the ground like if he stared long enough it would take pity and drop open below him. "Uh, I guess I'll go. Good night, Blue. It was nice, meeting you."

"Yeah. Good night, Gansey." Gansey started to walk away. The only car still in the lot was a garishly painted Camaro. Of course. Of course it was. "Hey!" Gansey stopped and turned back. "I'll see you soon?"

He wrinkled his brow. "You will?"

"You're coming to see my witch moms, aren’t you? You should ask them about your ley lines."

He brightened. "Ah! Yes, I will! I'll see you then, Blue!" He waved, and disappeared into his monster of a car.

Blue considered the fact that she had just gone out of her way to cheer up an Aglionby boy. Odd bird. Odd times. She shook her head and hopped on her bike. She'd have a hell of a time explaining how late she was to Maura, and she'd probably get a stern talking-to from Calla about the dangers of raven boys. But she suspected she might get a knowing look and a piece of pie from Persephone, so all was well that ended well.

And very soon, she'd get to see the strange boy with the weird name and the beautiful journal again. She was looking forward to it already.


End file.
